but, in fact, fifteen only, because the sixteenth being a cast of one of the fifteen, is placed there for the sake of uniformity.

The statues of the pediments, and the principal fragments ofthe figures, more or less broken, in all about fifteen or sixteen, are arranged round the room, or fixed on revolving pedestals.

The smallest fragments, the use of which it is nearly impossible to discover, and others, which appear to belong to particular fragments, carefully collected together by Lord Elgin, and which may hereafter exercise the spirit of conjecture, are deposited around the walls.

I could not but admire this fine arrangement, and the wisdom that planned it. There could not be a better disposition for the several kinds of study and research. I must, however, impart a wish I had formed, the idea of which I took the liberty to communicate to Mr. Hamilton, in a slight sketch.

I conceive they have been perfectly correct in placing within reach of the eye, and in a manner under the spectator's hand, works which, from the mutilated state they must undoubtedly be left in, are to be considered particularly as objects for study. Nevertheless, I have been struck with the difference of effect produced by several of them, according to the variation of distance and elevation. Whatever might be said, all these objects, if seen in their proper situation and distance, would give certain lessons, and produce certain impressions, which the imagination could not otherwise receive. The British Museum possess fragments of every part of the architecture of the temple. I wish them to take casts of them; from one mould of a capital you will derive eight casts. In architecture you want but one fragment of the cornice, and one of the entablature, to form the whole of it. Nothing then would be easier than to construct, at the end of the Museum, in plaster or masonry, the front row of the columns of the Parthenon, together with its pediments; to place a portion of the frieze in plaster under this colonnade; to incrustate casts of the metopes between the triglyphs, and to occupy the tympanum of the pediment with casts of those statues which used to ornament it. Thus you would sce, at a single glance, all those objects, both as they

were once seen in the work-shop, and in the situation and character assigned them by the artist. In the course of these observations, I shall communicate to you some other ideas, which the first survey of these masterpieces gave rise to. For it is insufficient that such objects as these gain the approval of artists only, they should likewise be so disposed as to win the admiration even of the ignorant; and whatever is done with that design, has more utility in it than is generally imagined. But I shall postpone these considerations to the following letters.

I should have liked to offer a remark or two on all the other riches contained in this museum. To speak the truth, I could only attend to the sculptures of the Parthenon. They alone, as you know, were the object of my journey; they only are to form the subject of this correspondence, agreeably to the limitations prescribed by you. Had there been no such conditions, you would not have wished me to describe objects you are acquainted with, and which have been already described very faithfully by

Messrs. Visconti and Burrow.

* I should, however, have preferred giving you the most ample description of all that is to be seen in the Museum, to hazarding the opinions and considerations you desire of me. To describe works of art, to class them, to give their proportions, to hazard an explanation of them, to attempt, by beautiful language and imagery, to convey an idea which cannot be expressed, is a work of patience, erudition, and imagination, and with a little of each of those qualifications you may satisfy many.

But you are not one of that number; you are an artist, and, as such, you wish me to treat of the sculptures purely as an artist. You desire me to communicate my opinion on that which constitutes their peculiar character and merit, whether absolute or relative; you wish me to apply a particular measure to each class of objects, in order to estimate them according to their different destinations, and to deduce such general consequences as will convey an idea of the whole composition, and of the genius which superintended these productions. You desire me to say what part I conceive Phidias had himself in the exe

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cution of this sculpture; what place the style of the epoch, and school, in which it was executed, should occupy in the parallel we are enabled to draw between their style and that of the other ancient works which remain to us; whether the taste of that age, from the authority of these fragments, ought to hold the rank which the testimonies of antiquity agree to allot it; what considerations are to be applied in comparing those fine productions of the ancients which have reached us, with the remains of the sculptures of the Parthenon; in short, of what importance, at a future period, will be the study and knowledge of these remains to the progress of the arts, and the developement of their history.

'The task you have set me, contains more difficulty than I can encounter. It would form the subject of a great work. But such a work could not be undertaken at present: for one wants a previous concurrence of opinions, of judgments, and experiments, formed on the taste of a great many persons, in order to establish, in this perfectly new region of the history of the taste of the ancients, sure roads, and such points as cannot fail to distinguish the merit of a performance. The productions of taste or genius possess not in themselves those evidences which render proofs unnecessary; on the contrary, theories and truths of sentiment are founded on the impressions of the majority, and we have hitherto either been deficient in experiments, or they are not sufficiently numerous.

Judge, then, if I should not be guilty of an indiscretion, were I to treat fundamentally the questions you have propounded. But if you will be satisfied with a simple opinion, and that in the way of a correspondence, which you are at liberty to dispose of as you please, this is what I propose to do, in order to meet your wishes.

Whenever I come from the museum, I will commit to writing whatever the sight of the objects shall have suggested to me, at least in reference to those points, on which you were desirous of obtaining my opinion, and address it to you as a kind of procès-verbal.

Ada

I have made the arrangement only of the Athenian sculptures, amid the British collection, the subject of this letter; in the succeeding ones I hope to communicate to you my sensations on, the first survey of these great works. In excluding all other, plans, and by simply pursuing the order of my impressions, I. shall in the end present you with a sketch of what may become a work at a future day.

ART. III. A brief Memoir of the Services and Proceedings of Captain Webb, Surveyor of Kumaon, collected from his familiar Correspondence.

[There is not, probably, a body of men in any part of the world, or of any profession, who have greater and more frequent calls for the exertion of their intellectual faculties than the civil and military servants of the East India Company, dispersed over their vast possessions in Hindostan. Left to their own resources, and compelled to act on their own responsibility, many of them have displayed a degree of talent, judgment, and discretion, far beyond their years and limited education. As oriental, subjects will occupy an occasional place in this Journal, we shall willingly introduce to public notice the merits of individuals, who are passing, or may have passed, the best part of their lives in these remote regions; and Captain Webb has considerable claims in this respect.]

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ED.

MR. WEBB was educated in the King's Ward, or Mathematical School, of Christ's Hospital; his mother, who is still living, having been left a widow with four children, two sons and two daughters. Though respectable, she was reduced to circumstances that did not admit of giving to those children such an. education as she would have wished. The subject of this memoir, on leaving Christ's Hospital, was articled, in the usual way, to Captain Riou of the navy, then commanding the Amazon frigate, in which Webb sailed with him on two or three cruizes; but he was not with him when this gallant officer fell in the action before Copenhagen. Captain Riou had been prevailed upon, a little previous to that battle, to release Webb from his indentures, on being satisfied that he would receive an appointment in the East India Company's military service, which was likely to be more advantageous to him than his continuance in the navy.

In 1802, young Webb joined the second battalion of the third

regiment as ensign, then at Barrackpore. Though the Company's allowances are supposed to be very ample, yet, as in India persons of every rank and denomination live in as much splendour and extravagance as their means will allow, a poor subaltern generally finds himself considerably in debt on winding up his accounts with his black treasurer. Having no means but his pay, Webb. had to struggle with many difficulties; but a few friends, which his cheerful and agreeable manners, his ability and good conduct, had procured, brought him through them all; and his only anxiety seems to have been the inability he was under to give assistance to his widowed mother, and to enable her to bring forward his younger brother.

In 1804, his prospects began to brighten by his promotion to a lieutenancy, and the hope that, through Lord Valentia, who kindly interested himself in his behalf, when on his travels in India, he might receive a staff appointment; but the application was unsuccessful. In the course of the war, however, which shortly followed, Webb's abilities began to be noticed. By the exertion of his mathematical knowledge, and its application to the duties of a surveyor to General Dowdeswell's division, in which capacity he was now acting, he had the good fortune to receive the approbation of the Surveyor General, who expressed his satisfaction in high terms at the execution of that part of the survey which had been intrusted to Webb.

The campaign being finished, Webb, who had always been accustomed to habits of industry, employed his leisure in the cultivation of music, and soon acquired a tolerable degree of execution on the most difficult of all instruments, the violin. In 1806, he was appointed to the temporary charge of a company of Sepoys; and the following year to the command of the escort which was to accompany Colonel Colebrooke, the Surveyor General, through the upper regions of Hindostan, who publicly expressed his great satisfaction in having a person with him so well qualified as Webb was to conduct a survey. The Colonel's health being unequal to the performance of a journey into the hills, Webb undertook it singly; he traversed the magnificent forests which skirt the hilly regions, and visited the great water